Patches & Expansions Category

We’re not even going to try to sort out the patches from the updates from the iterations from the campaigns and expansions and expanshalones. If it’s something going into an MMO that’s already out, it lands in this category! [Follow this category’s RSS feed]

The Division has this week patched up with Update 1.7, a whopper of a patch that introduces an epic new time-limited global event system, new commendations and patches, face masks, facial customization, new gear sets, account-wide sharing of bits and bobs like blueprints, a weapon rebalance, skill tweaks, the works. Oh, and new lockboxes dubbed “encrypted caches” from the Premium Vendor. Yes, they require dropped or cash-shop-bought keys, and yes, they “contain unique appearance items, emotes and skins.”

Ubisoft is opening up last winter’s Survival DLC to a free-play event starting this Friday and running through Sunday as part of its promotion of the patch. “Experience a completely new way to play The Division: cold, stripped of gear, and beset by a brutal snowstorm, you must survive until extracting safely in the Dark Zone,” Ubisoft teases newbies. “Finding warm clothes and survival equipment will be vital to your success.”

ArenaNet has a new dev vlog out today focusing on the development of Guild Wars 2’sPath of Fire elite specs. Some of the class specs were born from a great name and concept, the studio says, like the Mesmer’s Mirage, whereas others were put together via a systematic review of game mechanics and consideration for what each class is currently lacking, like the Necromancer’s new support skills.

ArenaNet announced yesterday that it’ll be announcing even more (heh) about the elite specs throughout the week; expect the team’s livestream on Thursday ahead of the PvP preview weekend this Friday, then mount details on August 28th and story info coming at the beginning of September. In the meantime, the dev diary and the older elite spec videos roundup are down below.

Vacation time’s almost over, sweetheart; it’s time to go back to serious work in World of Warcraft.

Additional Patch 7.3 datamining indicates that Blizzard’s team isn’t making the next round of dungeons a pushover. Specifically, mythic plus dungeons will pose a significant challenge to players until or unless they are able to acquire the gear to help them survive. To aid in that endeavor, 7.3 dungeons will provide higher item level gear, starting with ilevel 845 for standard dungeons and climbing to 885 and beyond for mythic plus.

With RuneScape, it always helps to wear specialized outfits to help you level up a particular skill more efficiently — but sometimes this gear can be difficult to acquire. Happily, the studio opened up more paths to grabbing skill outfits by playing particular minigames that are related to each profession.

Along with this change, this week’s patch opens up a new mode for the chatbox, allowing players to select the old and new design as desired.

The team is also excited to share a new “batch” of invention skill content that is coming soon to the game: “With this, invention will feel like a fully fledged skill, with content spanning the level gamut all the way up to 120.” Hang out with the devs and hear what they have to say on this update after the break!

The Korean StarCraft community is up in arms this week over Blizzard’s rerelease of the game — more specifically, its plan to effectively double-dip into the pockets of the very internet cafe culture that’s kept StarCraft a household name into 2017.

The Korean Herald reports that South Korea’s PC bang association has petitioned Korea’s Fair Trade Commission to intervene, arguing that Blizzard is improperly double-charging an hourly fee for StarCraft: Remastered when they’ve already long since paid a flat fee for the StarCraft license.

The bangs point out that they’ve been forced to install the upgraded version because of stability issues; but for that, they say, the upgraded version contains no new content and isn’t worthy of new fees, alleging that Blizzard is “misappropriating its superior market status to push unfair measures to PC bang owners, most of which are small-sized business owners.”

Despite the name, Elite: Dangerous has never required a particularly elite home computer to run. But it will be getting just a little bit more elite with its next patch, as 2.4 is removing support for the game’s 32-bit client. Players who wish to play the 2.4 test version will need a 64-bit version of the game; according to the official announcement, this change will affect a tiny portion of the game’s overall userbase.

Those players who will be affected will also be directly contacted by the team to make sure that everyone is aware of the change and what can be done to prepare. Odds are low this will affect you, but it’s still worth noting and being ready for. On the bright side, this marks another milestone towards ensuring that the 2038 problem doesn’t hit the world with a fury of a thousand suns, so we can commend Frontier Developments for looking ahead.

This past weekend, the gaming segment of my Twitter feed was positively dominated by chatter about Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire expansion free preview weekend. I even saw a few of my guildies dip back in, which shouldn’t have surprised me — quite a lot of our readers and friends told us in last week’s Leaderboard poll that they had plans to try the free weekend, many of them no doubt trying to decide whether to buy it and return to the game or even play it for the first time.

The question is, did it work? Did Guild Wars 2’s preview weekend convince you to buy Path of Fire? Let’s hit the polls and find out.

Pokemon Go players are buzzing today over the release of legendary Pokemon Mewtwo at the Yokohama, Japan, event, which according to Niantic allowed “thousands” of players to grab the critter.

“In the coming weeks, you, too, will have the opportunity to battle and catch Mewtwo with the new Exclusive Raid Battle feature,” Niantic says.

“Exclusive Raid Battles are similar to existing Raid Battles, with a few notable differences. Exclusive raids will periodically appear at Gyms around the world; however, unlike existing raids, Trainers will be invited to join an Exclusive Raid Battle. To receive an invitation to participate in an Exclusive Raid Battle, Trainers must have successfully completed a raid recently, by defeating the Raid Boss, at the Gym where the Exclusive Raid Battle will be taking place. The invitations will include advance warning of when the Exclusive Raid will take place, giving them ample time to coordinate with other Trainers before taking on the powerful Raid Boss.”

Last time around, we looked at the jobs everyone thinks is deep in the loser category in Final Fantasy XIV. Some of them are really in a bad place, some of them just seem to be in a bad place due to perception, and some sort of have both going on at the same time. But now it’s high time for us to look at the other side of the coin, the jobs that everyone thinks are just doing great.

The funny thing is that in this case, I feel there are fewer jobs where the reality is that the job isn’t that good but just gets perceived that way; it’s more a case where some of them are being seen as outright overpowered when they’re really in a pretty good spot. But enough of the hand-wringing; let’s move on to the jobs that everyone sees as being the absolute winners of the expansion thus far, and examine whether they’re really so great.

Horns of the Reach is live in The Elder Scrolls Online today as ZeniMax’s first major update since the Morrowind campaign/expansion rolled out in June. As planned, the paid DLC includes two new dungeons (Falkreath Hold and Bloodroot Forge) and plenty of new kit. And even if you don’t pay for the DLC, you’re getting Update 15 for free; it boasts the PvP battlegrounds mode Chaosball and the new Arcane University map.

“The Horns of the Reach two-dungeon pack is now available on PC and Mac, free for all ESO Plus Members, or for purchase via the in-game Crown Store for 1,500 Crowns. Update 15 general improvements are available free for all players, while Battlegrounds additions are free for owners of ESO: Morrowind (Battlegrounds requires ESO: Morrowind). Both will also release for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One adventurers on August 29.”

Good news for Black Desert players in North America, you got some free compensation! The bad news is that it’s to make up for emergency maintenance on the game; the good news again is that you probably were not playing at the time? It’s a multi-faceted situation, that’s what we’re getting at here.

While the official sources seem oddly reluctant to state the nature of the compensation, a player has posted a screenshot of the package, which buffs gains to combat experience, skill experience, life experience, and item gain, along with a boost to recovery across the board. It should last for an hour, so that’s something. Players on the forums are complaining that this is a result of the game’s reduced maintenance schedule and that regular maintenance would avoid this issue instead of requiring unexpected maintenance and compensation.

Mounts are the big new thing in Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire expansion, and as I’ve previously mentioned, I was initially concerned about their inclusion, given that traditional mounts would seem to necessitate a major revision of the game’s foundation. But of course, the new mounts aren’t traditional mounts; they seem more like toys to help players navigate parts of the world, not a second set of legs with a speed buff. I was OK with that; I was expecting, welcoming, something mundane and non-game-breaking.

But then my experience with the raptor mount in this weekend’s preview event actually impressed me: The raptor is astonishingly well-animated and genuinely fun (at least for those who don’t get motion sick), way better than a dumb toy or gimmick. While originally I rolled my eyes at the idea of romping around Elona on a dino, I surprised myself by enjoying whipping out rapty.

That said, I saw a lot of commentary this weekend from people who weren’t impressed — indeed, who talked themselves out of preorders specifically because of the mounts. The things I loved — the animations, the non-mandatory “toy” feel — seem to be huge turnoffs for other folks who want something more like, well, WoW. Is that you? Are you disappointed in the way the mount system works, or are you a fan of Guild Wars 2’s non-traditional mounts?